Health And Fitness Apps Are Exploding In Popularity — Here's Who Is Using Them

Today, Flurry came out with some numbers that demonstrate just how huge the health and fitness app market is getting. Between December 2013 and June 2014, health and fitness apps grew 62 percent in usage, compared to apps overall growing just 33 percent.

Flurry Analytics

As opposed to most apps, health and fitness apps by definition attract more usage. If you're using a Jawbone or a Fitbit or even just MapMyFitness, chances are you're going to check back in pretty frequently since the point of the app is to be consistently tracking your activity.

But while that first chart may not come as much of a surprise, what's really interesting is Flurry's analysis of who is actually using these health and fitness apps, what they call "Fitness Fanatics." To figure out who these fanatics are, Flurry looked at more than 6,800 health and fitness iOS apps in a sample of 100,000 devices.

The results were pretty surprising — 62 percent of these Fitness Fanatics were female, and 38 percent were male. They then compared that with the numbers for app users in general — 48 percent female and 52 percent male — to get this chart:

Flurry Analytics

At the same time that females are over-indexing on health and fitness apps, the 25-34 year-old age group also over-indexes at 41 percent, and the 35-54 year-old group over-indexes at 47 percent. Teens and millennials, on the other hand, aren't too excited by health and fitness apps.

Flurry Analytics

The last chart from Flurry looks at the habits of these users to see which groups of people are loving health and fitness apps. Not surprisingly, sports fans are way more into them than social network enthusiasts.